ESPN Article: UConn done with conference-realignment | The Boneyard

ESPN Article: UConn done with conference-realignment

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He woulda and coulda said nada. STFU WM. A nice'no comment' on CR would have been plenty and talk about the programs in general. No more....no less.
 
You all are fretting over three words that Manuel himself said: "I've been done" - everything else HE said is talking about continuing to be successful, upgrading facilities, etc.

You will also notice that he said "I've been done" not "we've been done". Point is that if anything is being done, it is being done at the presidential/consultant level, not by the AD who has to work with the other ADs in this league. By saying "I've been done", he makes the reporter feel like his question has been answered, and then he can turn the attention to things that he is working on, deflecting the question. If two months from now, we get offered a liferaft and the reporter goes back to Manuel with this story, he can say "I was being honest - I wasn't the one working on it. I was focused on my job."
 
Here's the question though, why is this an article at this time and why is ESPN headlining it on the MCBB page.
 
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It was an AP article - ESPN chose to take it off the wire and give it major billing. A lot of conference realignment just officially happened on July 1, so I'm sure there are a few AP stories out there about it.
 
I have mixed feelings on it. I think some on this board are prone to be Warde haters and won't give him any benefit of any doubt. I'm more in the middle - he could have said "no comment" but the reality is, even if he wanted to "actively pursue" other conferences, there's ZERO he can do unless they announce plans to expand.

Would some like him to hijack the ACC or Big 10 conference meetings and crash them, jump up and down, and say "UCONN wants in"? I guess I'm a bit confused, aside from "no comment", what others on here would have Warde do. We are stuck where we are at this time and it would make no sense for Warde to make it appear we hate the new conference - the fans certainly have done a great job of that for him...

If I read reports that say he sat on his ass while Rutgers or L'ville stole their invites away from us, I'll reassess. But I have to imagine that both he and Herbst were exceedingly active in pimping UCONN to the other conferences when they were looking at expansion.
 
We're effed.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
It's a no-win situation.

Are we supposed to defiant and proud of who we are or embarrassed and ashamed at the conference situation?

That's an honest question, I have no idea.
 
At some point the conclusion got to be Warde's no rocket scientist. So part of the solution to the mess our leaders have created by being ineffective is to raise ticket prices for less of a product. Given CT's lagging economy, already declining ticket selling trends, etc. You have to ask yourself; what is the man thinking?
 
This will sort out over time. I look at the product KO and Geno are putting out, and I know that UConn BB is going in the right direction. Teams like Florida, and the "other Huskies" are happy to compete against us. And ND would love to continue its women's BB against us. Begging, and fretting won't work. The best revenge is winning. And both the men's and women's teams are motivated to do this in the upcoming year.
 
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arnie3 said:
This will sort out over time. I look at the product KO and Geno are putting out, and I know that UConn BB is going in the right direction. Teams like Florida, and the "other Huskies" are happy to compete against us. And ND would love to continue its women's BB against us. Begging, and fretting won't work. The best revenge is winning. And both the men's and women's teams are motivated to do this in the upcoming year.
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Basketball won't sell us to another conference. The football team has to win.
 
CTBasketball said:
Basketball won't sell us to another conference. The football team has to win.
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I said it a year ago. Signing PP was the nail in the coffin for conference realignment. It showed the universe we were content with settling and trying to "consolidate" our modest gains under Edsall. It showed we weren't interested in striving for an exciting brand of football that would attract fans and recruits.
 
The results speak for themselves. Our conference credentials were better than some and slightly below others. Our selling UConn to others was poorly executed. According to Warde's recent article the fans will pay the price with higher ticket prices; yet some feel Warde and Susan should pay no price.
 
Selling UCONN was not the issue. There were too many ACC school that just didn't want UCONN. UCONN FB just wasn't good enough.
 
Bottom line is Warde sat by the phone and waited and the football team nosedived into oblivion.
 
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CTBasketball said:
Basketball won't sell us to another conference. The football team has to win.
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I don't believe that anymore. Pitt ad Cuse didn't get into ACC based on football as with Rutgers. Its now an excuse. I don't care what our pretend AD says- UCONN will not stay in this stopover conference and WM wont be AD past his contract
 
Chief00 said:
I am not sure he even did that (sat by the phone). Wasn't he in the Virgin Islands living it up.
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Yes - Warde Manuel made a big mistake traveling back in time with our basketball team to the 1987 Virgin Islands Classic, when cell phones and email weren't invented yet. It left him completely isolated from the outside world.
 
Gurleyman said:
Yes - Warde Manuel made a big mistake traveling back in time with our basketball team to the 1987 Virgin Islands Classic, when cell phones and email weren't invented yet. It left him completely isolated from the outside world.
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Thank you......good god the way folks on here talk about this you'd think that the only way of communication was standing in front of the conference offices with a sandwich board. I'm going to guess, because I don't know for sure, that he was in contact and providing the info needed. Does that make me his biggest fan, no, but to think the guy just sat on the beach with his thumb in his hind end while this was going down is a bit absurd.
 
Northbound said:
Thank you......good god the way folks on here talk about this you'd think that the only way of communication was standing in front of the conference offices with a sandwich board. I'm going to guess, because I don't know for sure, that he was in contact and providing the info needed. Does that make me his biggest fan, no, but to think the guy just sat on the beach with his thumb in his hind end while this was going down is a bit absurd.
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It's also absurd to think an AD can really do anything at that point. Everything in the final stages of CR is happening at the presidential/trustee level. Whatever factoids and paperwork or sales pitches they needed from the athletic department were obtained long ago. It isn't like the ACC called Storrs and said, "huh, Warde's not in - guess we'll go with Louisville."

If the blame goes anywhere for the last snub, it should go to the previous regimes - presidents who didn't have the foresight to move us towards AAU status or heavily invest in research facilities, and ADs who didn't keep pushing forward with upgrades, allowing us to stagnate - and who grossly mucked up what should be a great feather in our cap football-wise (BCS Bowl after 7 years at I-A level)

If a guy six months into his gig as AD (or whatever it was) is traveling with his basketball team to a high-profile televised tournament - he is doing his job. ADs go to those things - whether they be in Alaska or MSG or the Bahamas. He's not magically fixing our blemishes by sitting in Gampel.

Now, you can take him to task for other things if you wish - ticket policies, quotes you don't like, the delay in the Ollie hire, not making expansion of the Rent a priority. There are some fair criticisms to be made - even though there's often a point-counterpoint.
 
The ACC was in a situation (FSU threatening to leave for the B-12 and possibly taking Clemson with them) where if they did not take Louisville, they would have been looking to add Louisville and possibly Cincinnati a week later.

What the school is building towards is far greater than what we would have had if we did land in the ACC. I don't know if we will get there but the reality is that hoping, whining and begging for someone to add us to their conference isn't going to accomplish a damned thing. What will accomplish this is solid leadership (we have that now after a decade long void) succeeding in building a true, major university that can rub elbows with the elite public universities in the country.

We can come up with a thousand excuses as to why, with more success than any other school in the country, our attendance for both men's and women's basketball has dropped over the past few years. One fact is that the rest of the college sports world will view these as merely excuses, despite how valid any of the reasons may be. We (fans of the athletic programs, alumni and students) need to demonstrate, repeatedly that we can and will support our school's programs as well as any major conference school. President herbst and the remainder of the school's administration needs to succeed in what they are trying to accomplish while Warde and athletic department needs to find a way to fix the football program and increase the visibility of all of our athletic programs throughout the NCAA. These are all tall orders but nothing worth having comes from merely bitching and moaning.
 
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You don't beg but you develop a narrative and sell it. While I don't disagree that the biggest headwind was how disliked Herbst was with her peers. Yet the Louisville AD was widely acclaimed in articles with insider sources with closing and passing the gap in the last week. So to say the whole matter was past the AD level at that point isn't true.
 
Chief00 said:
You don't beg but you develop a narrative and sell it. While I don't disagree that the biggest headwind was how disliked Herbst was with her peers. Yet the Louisville AD was widely acclaimed in articles with insider sources with closing and passing the gap in the last week. So to say the whole matter was past the AD level at that point isn't true.
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That is truth. And the most necessary narrative to develop lies in the football program. We need to starting winning with regularity. Then comes a passionate fan base, then comes TV exposure/dollars, then comes potential recruits, then comes more bowl possibilities on a regular basis. Then invite?

goshdarn we could be here a while.
 
If the AD won deserved kudos, it was for building up Louisville's facilities, support and financial stability over time. If he got any for last-minute salesmanship, it was from lazy reporters acting like conferences make decisions like these as if they are buying a car.

Our narrative fight was lost pre-Manuel. Any chips we should have earned from the Fiesta Bowl bid got sent down the crapper with Edsall taking the first life raft out, the public fight with Burton, not winning the pr battles regarding our ticket sales at the Fiesta, hiring PP, etc. Now we're commonly viewed as a small-time program which had no business being there. The narrative should have been - and might still be now - that the same school that constructed national powers in both men's and women's hoops out of nothing, had done it again and had gone to a big time bowl game in record time after only seven years at that level. Instead the story became EVERYTHING but that - and all about how we mismanaged everything, didn't belong there, and were Exhibit A about what's wrong the system.

Then throw in a hoops team on probation with an interim coach, a new president and a new AD, and there was much more uncertainty at UConn than at any point since the Dream Season. Even if we wanted to do a kick-ass power point presentation in November of 2012, we were probably going to lose the battle at that time based on the current state of affairs. Our positives were media markets (Hartford/New Haven being largest market without a pro team - plus slight denting of NYC and Boston), academics, hoops tradition and a well-rounded athletic department - stuff the ACC already had ample evidence of. The football negative weighed us down too much.
 
Gurleyman said:
If the AD won deserved kudos, it was for building up Louisville's facilities, support and financial stability over time. If he got any for last-minute salesmanship, it was from lazy reporters acting like conferences make decisions like these as if they are buying a car.

Our narrative fight was lost pre-Manuel. Any chips we should have earned from the Fiesta Bowl bid got sent down the crapper with Edsall taking the first life raft out, the public fight with Burton, not winning the pr battles regarding our ticket sales at the Fiesta, hiring PP, etc. Now we're commonly viewed as a small-time program which had no business being there. The narrative should have been - and might still be now - that the same school that constructed national powers in both men's and women's hoops out of nothing, had done it again and had gone to a big time bowl game in record time after only seven years at that level. Instead the story became EVERYTHING but that - and all about how we mismanaged everything, didn't belong there, and were Exhibit A about what's wrong the system.

Then throw in a hoops team on probation with an interim coach, a new president and a new AD, and there was much more uncertainty at UConn than at any point since the Dream Season. Even if we wanted to do a kick-ass power point presentation in November of 2012, we were probably going to lose the battle at that time based on the current state of affairs. Our positives were media markets (Hartford/New Haven being largest market without a pro team - plus slight denting of NYC and Boston), academics, hoops tradition and a well-rounded athletic department - stuff the ACC already had ample evidence of. The football negative weighed us down too much.
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A lot of blame here but no fingers pointed at Hathaway?
 
UC990411 said:
A lot of blame here but no fingers pointed at Hathaway?
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It is implicit in there. We stagnated under Hathaway (or regressed in some ways), and were passed by despite being in positions of enormous strength, starting with twin national hoops titles in 2004, and continuing with a football program that ascended rapidly, faster than anyone thought possible.

Not everything was his fault - Edsall had his ego issues, Calhoun certainly had his (and didn't mind his own store well enough in regards to Nate Miles and APR issues), Burton was a prima donna, etc. And his bio reads nice - if he takes credit for championships the coaches he inherited won, or if he takes credit for the Burton Complex, which was in the works before he started. But we could have used a visionary - a guy (or gal) who would take twin national titles, which had never been done before, and strike while the iron is hot to fundraise for a Taj Mahal practice facility to rival the Burton. It was an obvious need, for practical space needs as well as recruiting. The donors and media eat in hallways at home games at Gampel. Looks crappy. Plus Memorial Stadium serves no function any more - other than to remind people we haven't done anything with that space. Maybe we could have also built nice baseball and softball stadiums as part of the same project, so that when Penders has a bomb squad, we don't have to host a regional in Bristol. Maybe another AD takes that win at Notre Dame, that shut out of South Carolina, that Fiesta Bowl appearance and expands the stadium to prepare, and either locks up Edsall or hits a home run with the new hire, and keeps things moving forward.

I will admit that I am saying all this in hindsight - I wasn't paying attention or calling for these things at the time, so perhaps I'm not being fair. But that was a lost decade for growth/expansion. Perhaps there was more Manuel could have done in those few months before Louisville got the life raft, but he was swimming upstream. The luster of the Fiesta Bowl/Kemba title had already worn off and was replaced by uncertainty in both programs.
 
UC990411 said:
A lot of blame here but no fingers pointed at Hathaway?
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>Our narrative fight was lost pre-Manuel. Any chips we should have earned from the Fiesta Bowl bid got sent down the crapper with Edsall taking the first life raft out, the public fight with Burton, not winning the pr battles regarding our ticket sales at the Fiesta,

That's all Hathaway by definition imo.
 
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